


Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya

by pseudonymitous



Category: Copper
Genre: American Civil War, Five Points, Gen, Morehouse, New York
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudonymitous/pseuds/pseudonymitous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Copper prequel-- Morehouse's leg and experiences in the war</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Battlefield

The story of how Robert Morehouse lost his leg was funny if you didn't think about it too hard. Not funny ha-ha, but funny-ironic, which was the same thing after a few shots and a good screw. He'd told it at parties before, getting raucous laughs from fellow military men and pitiful grimaces from sober ladies. Sober ladies always pitied him, and that's why he never let one hang around too long.

Robert's leg, the one still intact, was almost shot off at Little Round Top the previous July. Gettysburg. It was a good fight, a big victory. He'd got the heel of his boot stuck in a gap in the rock, seen a bullet fly straight past and tumble down the rock face. Lucky boy, he was, for surviving that. It would've been a hell of a lot more poetic if that was the incident that really did take his leg, and for awhile he considered making that his story, but he'd only been out of the war two and a half months, and people of his status tended to have a basic grip on mathematics. He could go down to Five Points, bellow the tale to a couple tipsy micks who wouldn't know any better, but he was no hero to them either way.

He'd actually lost it a year later, in the shit middle of nowhere, under heavy fire, and he'd cried like a bitch. He'd seen enough of those bullets mate with the limbs of his men to know what happened. Bite on a rag and break out the saw, boys. This one's coming off. He'd stood a safe distance away as decent men cried out in pain. A lot of them didn't make it, with infections and blood loss and such. Some of them screamed out their prayers like God Himself was the one cutting them open. Others whispered their last words like they were telling a scary story, talking to people who weren't there. Some who hadn't been for a very long time.

The Catholics made a bigger production of it. The Irish were big on wakes in their homeland- a proper cleaning and burial. Some of them got real worked up when that didn't happen. A couple of the Negroes were considerate; Freeman was one of them. Once, when he couldn't find a coin for a dead man's eyes, he popped a button off his own jacket. He always wished condolences. Talked a lot about a woman named Sarah back home. 

It was enough to drive a man to drink, and Robert could only imagine what it was like to sleep in those tents. He had his own barracks, even when they were on the road, but he could hear his men playing cards, spinning yarns, singing songs. He often caught himself whistling spirituals and reels at breakfast, wondering how he knew all the words. 

As a child, he'd been warned against these kinds of people. 

"The Irish are worse than the coloreds," his roommate at Harvard once said. "They'll drink your scotch and fuck your wife while their sister robs you blind." Robert had just nodded his throbbing head and pretended to read the paper. That roommate was now a senator in Boston.

The men were in the middle of breakfast when Robert heard the first musket. He'd called out to his men like Prince Hal. "Once more unto the breach, boys!" he joked. "Give em hell, you know what you're doing." 

They did. Robert fired on a few gray backs, unable to aim well in the thick air. A big black man named Russell fell down at his feet, clutching his chest. 

He only looked down for a second. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground, too.

Everything went slow after that. Got a bit fuzzy. The world took on a creamy blur around the edges, like he was looking through a dirty telescope. The sound of the battle suddenly went dull, as if he were hearing it with ears full of water. 

Someone was yelling at him, one of the Irish, but he couldn't make out his face. Calling him sir. Major, you're hit. Can you hear me? 

The world went dark.

When he woke up, he was on fire. Arms, legs, chest, hell, the world even looked red. He screamed bloody murder, tried to sit up, but a big hand pushed him back down.

"Hold him there," said a deep voice.

Two hands obeyed, one pinning him at the sternum and the other taking both his wrists. What the fuck happened? Where was he? 

The scene slowly came into view. He was lying on a bed of coats in a trench, far away from the gunfire. His captors came into focus, suddenly familiar faces. The negro Freeman and an Irishman name of Corcoran. He'd bet on Corcoran when the men boxed and wrestled. A brute of a man. He had a wife someplace too, and a little girl. He'd been a hell of a guy when the riots broke out. He'd been a hell of a guy at Gettysburg. And he had a hell of a grip. 

"Easy, Major," Corcoran growled. He had a cut on his eyebrow, mud, sweat and blood caked above his eye. His was the voice Robert heard before blacking out. He was singing under his breath as he struggled against Morehouse's strength. It sounded like "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," but the words weren't right. 

"...where are the eyes that looked so mild, haroo, haroo..." It was almost indetectable, a soft bass voice. Robert's vision was blurred to hell but his hearing was back. The flames licked higher, setting his torso ablaze. He heard a scream. The singing got a bit louder, and Corcoran's grip tightened. "...guns and drums and drums and guns, haroo, haroo..." Robert realized that the scream must've been his. He tried to focus on the song. Freeman was humming it from his invisible position at the foot of the makeshift bed. 

"...we have guns and drums and drums and guns, the enemy nearly slew ya, but darlin, dear, ya look so queer... Johnny I hardly knew ya." 

His heart sank. He'd heard this song before. The next verse. God, no. 

"Where are the legs with which you run, when first ye learned to carry a gun..."

Robert choked. He prayed against character, hoped against hope, wished to pass out again, but no such luck. He just bit down on the rag and listened as the Negro and his saw fueled the fire.


	2. Recovery

They got him to a hospital eventually. Time blurred and a fever set in. All the money in the world couldn't get him out of the Confederacy in this condition, so they waited. At some point, Freeman went back up north, but Corcoran stayed, playing cards and talking until the fever broke and the bleeding stopped. 

He didn't have much else to do, he said. Under normal circumstances, Robert would've asked he go back and be with his men, but this was different. He needed the company, and he didn't want the company of his fellow officers. Corcoran hadn't saved his leg, but he'd saved his ass. 

They talked about everything. Family. Money. The slave trade, the railroad, the best way to win a bar fight. Corky told him about coming to America, fighting for work and money, then literally fighting- boxing- for money. He joked that life was an ass-kicking contest, and he reckoned Robert was about to be a busy man.

Coming home was a different story. He'd been on furlough once before, when the riots broke out, but his unit had reassembled and been on their merry way. This time, Robert knew they were still assembled, with some newer, younger trust fund bastard at their head, marching forward without him. His father's best doctors were dumbfounded, lies were put in place, and the debts were repaid in ways only a Morehouse could manage. Appearances were kept, painting Robert as the hero, the brave Major, wounded in battle. Behind closed doors, the place was like a morgue.

The first wooden leg wound up on the cobblestone street in a bed of broken glass. The second narrowly missed a nurse's head and made a hole in the bedroom wall. Robert Morehouse couldn't walk worth shit, but his aim was improving. 

A disagreement on the issue between himself and an esteemed dinner guest nearly came to blows, and his father suggested that perhaps he spend a bit more time amongst other young men, reintroduce himself to the city. 

That was how Robert Morehouse ended up on a chaise in Five Points, drinking Kevin Corcoran's whiskey.

"I have two questions for you," Corky said upon finding Robert on his doorstep. "What the fuck are you doing, and how the fuck are you doing it?"

Robert noticed the house was empty. No sign of the wife Kevin had mentioned, nor the daughter. He didn't want to know. He beamed his most charming smile. "I'm slumming, dear heart. As for this-" he smacked the prosthetic "-magic."

"Haven't seen much of the aftermath from the riots, I'm guessing?" Kevin slurred, refilling his glass for the fourth or sixth time. "View ain't too good from the top of your tower." 

"On the contrary, I was on my way to church when I saw you pitch a large man through a second-story window. Quite the detective work, Corky." 

Kevin chuckled. "Second story brothel window. I'll be in confession the rest of my life for that." 

"I thought you people confessed one and done. Always liked that about you," Robert said. "Also, your women don't need condoms."

Kevin's face grew dark. "What's gonna happen to this city?" 

Robert thought for a moment. "New York is a phoenix. We're not good at much but burning down and building back up." He stood slowly, suddenly very sober. "On that note, I need to be home. My father will never believe I was in church." 

Kevin nodded, sparking up a cigarette. "Take care." 

Robert smiled with a confidence he didn't feel. "I always do."

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the rights to the folk song "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye." The tune is the grim predecessor to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," a popular song during the American Civil War, thought to have been first published in 1863.
> 
> "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" was an Irish anti-war song from (it's thought to be) the 1820s, when Irishmen were recruited to work and fight for the East India Trading Company. The song tells of a young man who was forcibly recruited into service, left his wife and child, and wound up severely injured, forced to beg. 
> 
> It was rewritten by an Irish American who felt it needed a makeover, and quickly caught on as an uplifting and patriotic tune in the States.


End file.
